alt Hacker News>it's not like they aren't a services juggernaut.
It depends. I guess you can argue this is true purely from scale. However, we should also keep in mind there are a lot of different things that Apple and tech companies in general put under "services". So even when you see a big number under "Service Revenue" on some financial report, we should recognize that most of that was from taking a cut of some other transaction happening on their devices. Relative to the rest of their business, they don't make much from monthly/yearly subscriptions or monetizing their customers' searches/interactions. They instead serve as a middleman on purchase of apps, music, movies, TV, and now even financial transactions made with Apple Card/Pay/Cash. And in that way, they are a service company in the same way that any brick and mortar store is a service company.
I'm confused at what you're trying to say here. Why exactly doesn't the service revenue matter again? For some pedantic reason of Apple being metaphorically similar to a brick and mortar store?
Apple's services revenue is larger than Macs and iPads combined, with a 75% profit margin, compared to under 40% for products (hardware).
Yeah, they serve as a middleman...an incredibly dominant middleman in a duopoly. 80% of teenagers in the US say they have an iPhone. Guess what, all that 15-30% app store revenue is going to Apple. That's pretty much the definition of a service juggernaut.
I also don't agree with you about the lack of selling Apple services to non-Apple users. TV+ is a top-tier streaming service with huge subscriber numbers, and their app is on every crappy off-brand smart TV and streaming stick out there. Yes, there really are Android users who subscribe to Apple Music - 100 million+ downloads on the Google Play store, #4 top grossing app in the music category.